1.01 Teraflops - Oh My!

Intel announced today that they have designed a processor capable of 1.01 teraflops. That's over one trillion calculations per second. What makes this innovation even more interesting is that it runs at a clock rate of the average Pentium 4 - 3.16 MHz. Unlike the P4, however, it uses a mere 62 watts of electricity to do it.

In the past year, we've seen the outstanding clock rates of the Pentium series jump by leaps and bounds over their predecessors. Then came the advent of dual and multiple core processors that literally doubled the efficiency, though the clock rate was almost halved. Not we see an astronomical increase in efficiency. From the 12 gigaflop (12 billion), 3.06MHz Pentium 4 to the new Intel processor of the same speed up to over a trillion.

So what does this tell us? Well, internal clock rate only goes so far. Perfecting efficiency is working out rather well. It would seem that the guys down in Santa Clara are working smarter and not harder, after all.

Expect to see multiple core 1.0TFps processors at a higher clock rate within the next five years or so. It's only getting easier.